1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a transport apparatus that transports a medium, and a printing apparatus that performs printing on the medium transported by the transport apparatus.
2. Related Art
Hitherto, there is known a printing apparatus (ink jet recording apparatus) including a transport belt having a support surface that supports a medium such as paper, and a printing section (ink jet head) that performs printing on the medium transported by the transport belt. Further, as this type of transport belt, there is given a transport belt that has a support surface with a plurality of protrusions branched at the distal ends thereof, and attracts a medium onto the support surface with an intermolecular force generated between the plurality of protrusions and the medium (for example, JP-A-2007-145555).
The protrusions of the transport belt are formed of polymethyl methacrylate at the proximal ends and formed of carbon nanotubes at the branched distal ends for the purpose of securing flexibility and durability.
In the printing apparatus, the transported medium may be heated for the purpose of, for example, fixing a printed image or the like onto the medium. Therefore, when the protrusions of the transport belt are formed of a resin material having low heat resistance, the protrusions may thermally be deformed to reduce the intermolecular force to be generated between the plurality of protrusions and the medium. In other words, the transport accuracy of the medium may be decreased in this case.
The above-mentioned circumstances do not apply solely to the printing apparatus, but are generally common also to transport apparatuses that transport a medium while heating the medium.